Vettel hails important step

Sebastian Vettel's fifth victory of the season sees him move thirteen points ahead in the battle for the world championship.

Vettel has led every lap of the last three races - a feat not achieved since Ayrton Senna in 1988 - and he says he is happy with his win.

"All in all, it was a very good race for us and I’m happy with the result. I had a good start, Mark had a better one and it was close in Turn 1, but I had a good exit from Turn 3 and got ahead", he said.

"I was able to open a gap, which was important. I felt very good on the soft tryes and was competitive, I could have stayed out even longer I think, but at some stage you have to cover. McLaren and Ferrari were quick on the hard tyre today, so it was important to have a gap to them. I saw some sparks at the end from the car, but we saw a lot of cars throwing sparks this weekend, and we joined them. It was a great day for us and an important step".

Mark Webber finished in third place but bemoaned a KERS problem that he felt cost him the runner-up position.

"We had a KERS issue that we had to manage. It’s maybe hard for people watching to know what it affects on the car, its power on the straight obviously, but also managing brake balances and those sort of things", he said.

"The guys were trying to help me get the KERS to recover and were talking with me on the radio. In addition, when you have a one-stop race, it’s always a chance you have a front-right lock up. As the fronts are very important you need to look after them which can affect the rhythm a little bit, but I tried to stay as cool as possible. Overall, I was pretty happy with how I drove; we should have finished further up the road, but it’s the way it was today."